YAOUNDE/DAKAR (Reuters) – Islamist militants from neighbouring Nigeria abducted a French family of seven, including four children, in northern Cameroon on Tuesday, French President Francois Hollande said.

The risk of attacks on French nationals and interests in Africa has risen since France sent forces into Mali last month to help oust Islamist rebels occupying the country’s north.

YAOUNDE/DAKAR (Reuters) – Islamist militants from neighbouring Nigeria abducted a French family of seven, including four children, in northern Cameroon on Tuesday, French President Francois Hollande said.

The risk of attacks on French nationals and interests in Africa has risen since France sent forces into Mali last month to help oust Islamist rebels occupying the country’s north.

DAKAR/ATHENS (Reuters) – Gunmen kidnapped seven French nationals, including three children, on Tuesday in northern Cameroon near the border with Nigeria and the perpetrators came from neighbouring Nigeria, French President Francois Hollande said.

The risk of attacks on French nationals and interests in Africa has risen since France sent forces into Mali last month to help oust Islamist rebels occupying the country’s north.

DAKAR/ATHENS (Reuters) – Gunmen kidnapped seven French nationals, including three children, on Tuesday in northern Cameroon near the border with Nigeria and the perpetrators came from neighboring Nigeria, French President Francois Hollande said.

The risk of attacks on French nationals and interests in Africa has risen since France sent forces into Mali last month to help oust Islamist rebels occupying the country’s north.

DAKAR, Feb 13 (Reuters) – AngloGold Ashanti is to
hold off on a $500 million expansion plan for its Sadiola joint
venture mine in western Mali until the security situation
becomes clearer, a company executive said on Wednesday.

Richard Duffy, executive vice-president of continental
Africa, said the world’s third-largest gold producer was simply
waiting on developments in the French-led war to oust Islamist
rebels from the country’s northern desert.

NIAMEY/BAMAKO (Reuters) – An armored column of Chadian troops in Niger moved towards the Malian border on Tuesday, part of an African military force that is gradually deploying to support French operations against Islamist rebels in northern Mali.

A Reuters reporter witnessed the Chadian forces, who are experienced in desert operations, advancing north from the capital Niamey on the road to Ouallam, some 100 km (60 miles) from the border, where a company of Niger’s troops are already stationed.

DIABALY, Mali (Reuters) – French and Malian armored columns rolled into the towns of Diabaly and Douentza in central Mali on Monday after the al Qaeda-linked rebels who had seized them fled into the bush to avoid air strikes.

France said the advance was a significant step in its campaign to break Islamist fighters’ grip over Mali’s vast desert north, a presence raising fears of the region becoming a an African launchpad for international militant attacks.

DIABALY, Mali (Reuters) – French and Malian armoured columns rolled into the central Mali town of Diabaly on Monday after the al Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels who seized it a week ago melted into the bush to avoid air strikes.

Diabaly, 350 km (220 miles) north of Mali’s dusty riverside capital Bamako, had harboured the main cluster of insurgents south of the frontline towns of Mopti and Sevare.

In the central Malian town of Diabaly, seized by Islamist fighters on Monday, the wreckage of the Islamists’ charred pick-up trucks lay abandoned among the mud-brick buildings, television images showed.

About Bate

"Bate Felix is a Dakar-based West & Central Africa Correspondent. He joined Reuters in 2007 as a graduate trainee and has worked in Johannesburg, London, Brussels, Paris and Amsterdam. He now covers economics, politics and general news stories in over a dozen countries in West & Central Africa."